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Technology and tools to drive engagement and revenue

Tag Archives: crowdsourcing

Use: Engage the community to provide photos for stories or events; increase engagement for advertisers with customers and prospects

Scoopshot is a “crowdsourced” photography platform that connects photographers (amateur and professional) with media companies. Publishers can create a “task” on Scoopshot and ask Scoopshot users to submit photos related to that task. For example, if a newspaper wanted photographs from a July 4th parade, they can create that task on Scoopshot and hope that local photographers respond (publishers can identify how many potential Scoopshot photographers reside in a particular location).

All photos cost $5 (of which the photographer gets half) and can be bought by anyone (not just the task creator). Publishers can create tasks for free but pay extra for things like mobile app alerts, including a logo or a task banner and extending the timeframe for the task.

Publishers benefit by getting access to photos of events they may not be able to cover (but our valued by the community) and creating deeper relationships with community members. They could also use the service to increase engagement for advertisers, for example asking Scoopshot members to submit photographs of dresses they covet from Macy’s or their meals from Olive Garden that could be included in advertiser ads.

Use: Establish deeper connections with your community by facilitating sharing of content from the community to the news outlet; bolster an advertiser’s product with “testimonials” from community

Guardian News and Media created the GuardianWitness platform (Web and mobile app) which allows people to easily share text, photos and videos directly with Guardian editorial staff and view what other citizens are contributing. Some contributions could be featured in Guardian digital on print publications.

The Guardian posts “assignments” and asks for community contributions. Recent assignment themes ranged from “How fast is your pet?” and “Your pressure cooker recipes” to more serious “Turkey demonstrations” and “student feminism.” Each assignment has a defined life-span. One of the more popular recent “closed” assignments was Top pets: naughty kittens and cheeky cats which had 869 contributions.

Other media have established formal sharing platforms, such as CNN’s iReport. The value to news organizations is deeper community connections and increased engagement (particularly if shared content is featured on the core media sites), not to mention the possibility of enhancing hard news stories. The platform could also be used to help advertisers, e.g. sharing “fashion” photos of recently purchased outfits from Macy’s.